For many years it has been fairly conventional practice to mechanically compress various types of bulk material (particularly fibrous material) into bales which are bound by wire, twine, or other suitable binding material. The equipment used for this purpose may be generally referred to as baling equipment or apparatus.
This type of equipment has been commonly used on farms and ranches for baling hay, straw, and other fibrous materials. It has also been used in various industrial or commercial applications.
Baling machines have been previously provided for gathering and compressing material into bales of various sizes and shapes. For example, baling machines have commonly been used for making round bales, square bales, rectangular bales, etc.
More recently baling machines have been designed for making relatively large bales (e.g., 4 feet square by 8 feet long, or 4 feet in diameter and 4 or 5 feet long). These large bales provide certain advantages. For example, it is more efficient to handle a few large bales as compared to handling numerous small bales.
There are some disadvantages, however, associated with the use of previously known baling machines. For example, many conventional agricultural baling machines utilize a large plunger to pack the material to form a compressed bale. This requires a significant amount of power, and the resulting packing of the bulk material is not uniform. Conventional round baling machines do not utilize plungers but instead they cause the bulk material to be rolled upon itself very tightly. Another disadvantage of such equipment is that the packing and compressing of the material must be interrupted in order to perform the binding or tying operation.
When many types of bulk materials are compacted too tightly, spoilage of the material often results because of trapped moisture in the material. Air cannot penetrate into tightly packed material. Furthermore, tightly packed material is not easily separated or loosened when the bale is opened. This can detract from palatability and also interferes with the desired uniform nature of the material.
Prior art baling apparatus and equipment are described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 689,399; 713,791; 1,045,184; 2,030,031; and 2,571,489. Devices for bagging material are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,222,853 and 4,655,128. Pelletizing apparatus is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,063,361 and 3,230,902 describes apparatus for making compressed blocks of food material in a tube. U.S. Pat. No. 3,683,796 describes apparatus for compacting comminuted waste material.
There are a number of disadvantages associated with conventional plunger-type balers. The cost of construction of such balers is relatively high due to the large number of individual components required. Also, because of the large number of high wear components used in such machines, there are reliability problems and a need for a significant amount of maintenance to keep the machine working properly.
Another problem associated with conventional plunger-type balers is that there is an unreliable and non-uniform distribution of bulk material in the resulting bale. Further, the power requirement for operation of the conventional plunger-type baler is greater than required in the apparatus of the present invention.
Although conventional apparatus is available for making very large baled units of bulk material (in either round or square cross-section), such apparatus does not provide any means for effecting ventilation of the baled unit. As a result, spoilage can easily result in large baled units made by conventional apparatus.
There has not heretofore been described baling apparatus for uniformly and efficiently gathering, compressing, and binding various types of bulk materials.